


Of the trees at home

by Vampiric_Charms



Category: Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Angst, Horror, M/M, Mild Gore, Nightmares, Slow Burn, Supernatural Elements
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-16
Updated: 2020-10-30
Packaged: 2021-03-08 19:41:43
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 8,893
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27032101
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Vampiric_Charms/pseuds/Vampiric_Charms
Summary: Demons, devils, monsters - they are all the same, and the damage they cause can be devastating.  Armitage Hux learns this the hard way after a strange encounter in the woods.  Kylo Ren is the answer he is given for his exceptional situation...but knocking on that particular door leads to an outcome just as devastating in the end.  When no options are left, what power does a single person have against a monster out for their soul?
Relationships: Armitage Hux/Kylo Ren
Comments: 10
Kudos: 112





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This was written with the spookiness of October and Halloween in mind, as a little ghost story that wouldn't leave me alone. If anyone is after some ambiance while reading, I listened to [this incredible soundtrack](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tQT484dYzlk&list=PLDisKgcnAC4TQfWkUjtqnuv10rNOMzWMM&index=1&ab_channel=TheNewtonBrothers-Topic) as I wrote, and it actually inspired a great deal of the story as it was developing.
> 
> Content warning for some violence and gore in later chapters, though nothing too extreme. 
> 
> Enjoy!

The knock was unexpected and very frantic.

Ben looked up from mindlessly scrolling through his phone in the dark, irritated at the late-night interruption, and glanced over at the front door. The large window in the center was covered with cardboard, making it impossible to see who was out there on the cobwebbed porch in the middle of the woods, and he was fully prepared to ignore whoever it was who assumed bothering him was a good idea.

But then the knock came again, and again - followed now by a hoarse voice calling out something Ben couldn’t understand.

Almost angry now, Ben hefted himself up off the sofa. He stubbed his toe on a leg of the large, heavy side table in the dark of the room and, limping, went to the door. He waited, a sensation he recognized and hated prickling at the back of his neck. Whoever this person was, he already knew why they were here.

Not hesitating now and before they could knock again, he ripped the door open with his usual amount of venom. A man was, predictably, standing there in the gloom, bathed in shadows when Ben refused to turn the porch lights on. He looked frightened, which only reinforced Ben’s understanding of the situation.

“Go away,” he said, already starting to close the door again.

The man flung a shaking arm out, his palm landing on the edge of the wood just before Ben could get it all the way shut. “Please,” he said quickly, “please, wait. Are you Kylo Ren? I need - I need your help.”

Ben stared at him, the man’s features coming into slow focus as his eyes adjusted to the nighttime darkness outside. He was tall, almost as tall as Ben, and skinny. Very skinny. His cheeks were sunken and his eyes, a color Ben couldn’t really make out, were sunken and glittering feverishly in his frightened face. He was ill, and not in a way Ben wanted to assist with. 

“I don’t go by that name anymore,” Ben told the man firmly. “I can’t help you. You need to leave.”

He tried again to shove the door closed, but the man leaned heavily against it - not in protest this time, but literally sagging as his body gave way to a wave of exhaustion.

“Please,” he gasped again, obviously grasping at the only hope he had left. His expression turned panicked as he stared at Ben, unfocused. “Something - something is wrong, they all said you could fix it. I don’t know what else to do.”

Ben glared at him, ready to send him away, as far away as he could until that prickling of ‘something worse’ left as well. He paused, though, and let the sensation build a bit more, feeling it out. The man watched with those ill eyes as Ben felt the tethers, the ropes, that were holding this poor soul captive. 

“Fine,” he said reluctantly, giving in with a brief glimmer of empathy he thought had long died with his previous self. He reached out and grasped the man’s shoulder, trying to give him a bit of reassurance when he wasn’t sure yet what he was going to do. “You can rest here, okay? That’s all I can promise you right now. I have an extra room, you can sleep there tonight and we’ll talk tomorrow.”

The man practically stumbled into the house and into Ben’s arms when Ben gave him entrance and, in the dim light from the stairwell just inside the main foyer, Ben could see how sick the man really was. He was almost already gone. Pity struck through the earlier empathy and Ben’s choice was made for him, almost without his consent. 

Whatever this was, it had already nearly won. For all Ben could tell, this man’s soul would be gone by morning.

At least it would happen here, where it would be freed.

Ben reached out to help the man steady himself as he crossed the entry into Ben’s home. “What’s your name?” 

The man gratefully accepted his assistance as Ben slid an arm under his and around his back. He weighed almost nothing against Ben’s solid frame, a bad sign. “Armitage,” he grumbled. “Armitage Hux. Thank you.”

“Call me Ben,” he told him. “I don’t go by Kylo anymore. Come on, there’s a guest room upstairs you can sleep in.”

Ben helped the man - Armitage, he said his name was - up the stairs. It was a difficult job, given Armitage’s legs didn’t seem to want to hold him upright any longer, but they made it to the top landing and shakily down the hall. Ben let Armitage lean against the wall while he flicked on the hall light and opened the door to his spare room. It was mostly empty, only a bed and dresser, a dim yellow-ish light inset into the ceiling. The mirror hanging on the far wall was covered with a white sheet. He hadn’t yet had time to take it down and bury it out back, like most of the others.

Ben gestured to the room. “Here you go. Come sit down.”

Armitage took a step toward the doorway but stopped suddenly on the threshold, unable to continue inside. Ben glanced up, over the door casing. He had hung a small talisman there, as he had over all the doors and entryways in the house. Nothing major, nothing like he used to do, but apparently the black and pink stones were enough.

Another bad sign.

Pity swelled again. Ben took Armitage’s arm and allowed him to come into the room just as he had through the front door. Armitage looked at him, confused and scared, and that pity felt like cement in Ben’s stomach. “You need to sleep for a while,” Ben told him.

Ben left Armitage sitting in a daze on the bed. The linen closet was just across the hall, and he retrieved a good heavy blanket for the chill he knew the stranger would feel as night crept on. He also grabbed a small box on the top shelf of the closet on impulse, then returned to the guest room.

“Will you help me?” Armitage asked as Ben told him again to sleep and handed over the blanket. “They told me you were the only one who could.”

This was the second time he had mentioned this, and Ben took a step back as Armitage let his head drop onto the pillow and pulled the blanket close. “Who told you that?”

“A woman,” Armitage whispered. “I think. I - I found her online, when I was looking up my - um, these symptoms. She told me to find you.”

Ben just hummed a noncommittal response and turned away, still not giving him an answer. Ben didn’t want to help this man. He didn’t want to be involved with these things any longer, didn’t want to be dragged back into that world of death and sadness and desperation. He needed to think, to figure out his next steps here before whatever attachment had sunk into Armitage realized where it was, _who_ he was.

He pulled a fragrant handful of whole clove buds from the little box and set one deliberately into each corner of the room. “Do not leave the bed,” he told Armitage, placing three more cloves on the floor under the footboard. “Stay in here tonight. Yell if you need me and I will come to you, not the other way around. If you leave this room, you leave the house. Understand?”

Armitage, who was almost asleep with his stupor, blinked and nodded slowly.

“It will be safer when the sun comes up,” Ben added as an afterthought. “You can leave the room then, if you want to. But not while it’s dark.”

It wasn’t necessarily the sunlight that would keep the evil at bay, but rather the lack of fright that came with the dark. This thing would kill Armitage no matter what time of day it was, but people always seemed more afraid in the dark, and that fear was nearly more dangerous than the beings themselves.

“Who are you?”

The faint question reached him just as he was about to leave the room, and he glanced over his shoulder to find Armitage’s fever-bright eyes watching him. It wasn’t odd to him, that Armitage would have sought him out, not when everything about him was so desperate now. He was like all the others - rejected by doctors, refused by medical treatments, ailed by something unknown that very few people understood.

Ben sighed, resigned, as the pity blossomed again into a sympathy he both hated and embraced after so long without it.

“Someone who will help you,” he said quietly.

He tucked the box into his pocket and left the room, leaving the overhead light on.

xXx

There was a name for what Ben was, what he once practiced. He didn’t call himself by the title anymore, though obviously some people still did.

Hedgewitch - one who straddles the worlds and sees beyond.

Like a medium, or the crazy old occultist who read tarot cards on the pier for tips. Ben wasn’t those things, even if no one really saw the difference. To them it was all the same.

Ben hated it, hated his life as Kylo Ren. He had left it all two years ago, after his grandmother died and his uncle began pressuring him more and more for things Ben didn’t want to delve into or change. He wasn’t exactly hidden here in his grandfather’s inherited house, and Uncle Luke, his mother, anyone who was looking - they all knew where to find him. They hadn’t. Or at least, they hadn’t looked for him very hard after he vanished.

His _family_ hadn’t looked, at least. Armitage had, and he’d found Ben easily enough. The first person since he had secluded himself here, in the woods and far away.

He had grown up in this house, with his grandparents looking after him while his mother was working and his father was away. He’d been a quiet kid, more introspective than outgoing, and his grandfather doted on him, loved him. Taught him things.

The house had been left to him by his grandparents, after his grandmother had outlived her husband. Though Anakin’s death hadn’t exactly been from natural causes, taken from the world far too soon. It had left a gaping wound in Ben’s life, his absence as he grew through his teenage years. 

It was still gaping, even after all this time.

Ben looked around, almost seeing his childhood home through the changes he had made over the two years he had been here. The old furniture was gone, replaced by things more modern and less familiar. Walls had been painted, photos removed. Heavy curtains over all of the windows, blocking their reflective glass. The large antique mirror that used to hang over the fireplace, it was gone. _Every_ mirror was gone, or else covered in the hope of keeping things out.

But he could still see the room the way it was, too, this space where he had grown and loved and been happy. It was difficult.

He went into the kitchen and lit the stove to heat the kettle. He should have offered Armitage some tea, or at least something warm to drink when his soul must be so cold. Instead he pulled down the canister of instant coffee, preparing to stay awake until the sun came up. His nightly ritual. Only five hours to go, now.

It had been a very long time since he had slept peacefully through the night.


	2. Chapter 2

_A face, scarred and ageless and angry, stared at Kylo Ren as he stood in the dark. He was surrounded by nothingness, nothing except the face, the putrid scent of decay that came with it. The air was weighted, dangerous, pressing in on all sides. It was filled with intent and with death._

_Foreboding was heavy in his stomach; his chest felt as though it were burning with hatred, with fear, with the pain of_ knowing. _He needed to escape, to get away from this place where nothing was everything._

_It was a place he had been before, the place where the creature had found him._

_Everywhere and nowhere, together._

_Kylo could not breathe as seconds lengthened on and on, could not cry for help even if he wished he could. He was alone in the darkness with the monster from beyond, the monster that had already taken so many lives. He was in danger here, in danger of facing the same fate as his grandfather. It was coming, he knew it was, and it - this creature - was forever unavoidable._

_It was coming._

_It was here. It was always here._

xXx

Ben startled awake on the couch. He looked around, his heart pounding as he took in his surroundings with a stab of anger. He had fallen asleep. The very thing he had been trying to avoid happened anyway. Sleeping at night when there were still mirrors in the house, covered or not, was a stupid, _stupid_ thing to do.

Suddenly, and very unexpectedly, he missed his uncle.

But then he remembered Armitage, tucked in upstairs, and forced himself fully awake. He grabbed his phone to check the time - nearly six thirty. The sun was almost up. The house was quiet, though above he could hear the groaning of floorboards as Armitage apparently woke as well. 

Steeling himself for what he had already chosen to do during the stretching hours of the night, he stood and went up the stairs.

As expected, Armitage was awake when Ben knocked on the door and let himself inside. He looked a bit better this morning, his guest. His face had more color than it had last night, even if he was still gaunt and somewhat ill-looking. His hair was red, something Ben hadn’t noticed in the dark. Armitage looked at him, his eyes only a bit more clear than they had been. There was pain there, and fear. Just as there had been before.

“Want to go for a walk?” Ben asked, already knowing Armitage would accept. That he would do anything, with his soul as weak as it was, in his desperation for solace and release. “I’ll make us some coffee and we can go down one of the trails behind the house. It’ll do you some good.”

Armitage nodded, and that was that.

He followed Ben downstairs where he brewed some coffee for them both, pouring it into tall travel mugs to keep warm. He offered Armitage one of his heavy coats from the hall closet, noticing that all he was wearing was a wrinkled button up and dirty slacks that had seen better days. Armitage accepted the jacket and they went outside into the crisp morning air.

It was November. The trees were vibrant as the sun rose over them, setting the brilliant golds and reds and oranges to flame. A beautiful sight, one Ben never tired of regardless of how long he had lived here.

His house, his grandfather’s house, was on several acres of land, far from the nearest community or town. There were worn trails all through the forest, some leading up the nearby mountains, others going to a small lake. All leading somewhere, or else in circles one could walk for hours. It was empty out here, save for himself and the wildlife, and he cherished that solitude. 

Now, though, he walked with Armitage. Not quite alone.

“I’m going to need to know some things,” Ben said quietly as leaves crunched underfoot. Armitage just nodded silently and took a sip of his coffee. “Where are you from?”

That first question seemed to surprise him, and Armitage glanced fleetingly at Ben before answering. “Ireland,” he said. “I was born in a little village outside Sligo. I live in Dublin now.”

“And you came directly from there, to find me? No stops in-between?”

Armitage nodded again.

“Is that where you picked this thing up? In Ireland?”

Another nod, though now Ben at least had some idea of how desperate Armitage was if he really did hop on a plane across the Atlantic just to find him in the dead of night. “I’m gonna need a bit more than that, pal. Tell me your story or no deal.”

“You’ll really help me?” Armitage asked, his voice wary. When Ben answered in the affirmative, he sighed in relief, his shoulders practically sagging with it. “It was a few months ago,” he finally began, looking off through the trees as the sun bathed the grounds with warmth through the sharp autumn air. “I was visiting my father in the country. I’m a barrister - I don’t practice much now, not after my mother died. It was her wish for me to do something more with my life, I don’t know. Her death slowed me down, I think.”

Ben listened, hearing an accent now the more Armitage spoke and gained confidence in his words. He wasn’t sure yet where this was going, but they had time. Maybe not much, but enough.

“I was there at the estate to bring some of her things to my flat. Books and such. I had already loaded my car and was ready to go, but I had this odd feeling. As if I might not be back. So I took a walk.” He laughed, a hollow and mirthless sound, and gestured around them. “Much like this, I suppose. I’d walked those grounds so many times as a child and nothing ever happened. Nothing frightened me or kept me away.”

He fell silent and Ben glanced at him as Armitage considered his next words. After a moment, he continued. “I found this tree, just at the edge of the property. I didn’t recognize it so...I went to get a closer look. I don’t really know what happened. I must have fallen, maybe hit my head - but I opened my eyes and it was hours later. This is going to sound mad,” he said, eyes darting to Ben for a brief moment, “but the tree was gone. When I woke, it was as if it had never been there.”

Ben felt a brief, though strong, surge of panic at this, though he tamped it down quickly, locking it away with all of the other things he kept hidden. It was dangerous, that panic. Armitage pressed forward with his story and Ben focused on him again.

“I didn’t notice anything wrong - wrong with me - until a few days later. I felt ill, as though I had a fever. And then things got worse from there.”

Ben was quiet for a moment, still thinking of those things long forgotten that he had hoped never to remember, before asking, “What did this tree look like?”

“You believe me?” Armitage looked at him in shock, and Ben met his eyes. They were green, his eyes. Ben hadn’t noticed before. 

“Yes,” he said. “I believe you.”

Armitage made a small, surprised sound in his throat and sipped at his coffee again. “Old. It was very old. And withered, like it was dying - or maybe had been struck by lightning. There were no leaves, all of the branches were bare. And the bark was grey, maybe black. I don’t remember.”

The rest of his story was familiar, at least in that the symptoms were all things Ben expected of a possession like this. After the fever, Armitage felt better - as if a veil had been lifted. He was energized, happy. And then the dreams started, and the discomfort leached into his daily life, kept him awake and on edge until the hallucinations took hold. Then the fear came, and the crippling doubt. Voices would whisper to him at night, and then would sap his energy during the day. A shadow of himself, barely alive. Not eating or sleeping and always, always afraid.

Things had progressed slowly, like a small thorn wedging itself into his mind, and then quickly - as the thorn bloomed into a giant and vicious weed, taking everything and leaving nothing but weakness, terror, in its wake. 

It was that terror, the fear, that fed these things and allowed them to fester and grow. It wouldn’t be long, Ben knew, until there was nothing of Armitage left to save.

Even if he was there, physically there, speaking with Ben and walking through these beautiful woods, his soul was almost depleted. He had seen it too often. Many of those times he had been brought in too late, only to see the poor person die in bed. Exhaustion, is what doctors would call it. Death without a medical cause.

Though sometimes - sometimes he was able to bring them back. 

Ben frowned as Armitage went on, telling him of the weeks of frantic internet searches that led him to Ben’s doorstep, the redeye flight and the cabs and the treks through darkness.

“We’ll start when we return to the house,” Ben told him, and the relief leapt back into Armitage’s face, his posture. He smiled at Ben for the first time, meeting his gaze for several seconds and then casting it back out to the glowing trees around them.

“I feel better here,” Armitage whispered. “Already. Better than I did back home. I actually slept well last night, too; it’s been a while.”

Ben regarded him for a moment, almost surprised by this admission. “We still have a bit of a fight ahead of us,” he said honestly. 

“Will it be like an exorcism, then?” Armitage asked, those bright, feverish eyes flicking back to Ben’s. The smile was gone. “I’ve read the book and don’t much care for the idea of - of all that.”

Ben scoffed. “I’m not a priest.”

“Oh, well. That’s good, at least. I haven’t been to church since I was a child.” Armitage shrugged and pulled Ben’s jacket closer over his chest, as though protecting himself from the very thought. “So what should I expect, if not an exorcism?”

“Nothing quite so dramatic,” Ben said dryly. “I use herbs and teas, things like that. Didn’t you say someone told you about me? And they didn’t mention any of this?” When Armitage shook his head, Ben asked, “Who was this person?”

“Someone online,” Armitage said defensively, and Ben could almost see him bristling - though whether that was from anger or embarrassment, Ben didn’t know. “She said she knew you. Called herself Rey. I didn’t ask any questions, I was too - ” he cut himself off and made an irritated sound. “I was too desperate. I only spoke to her yesterday, it all happened very quickly.”

That _did_ surprise him, and Ben stopped walking. Armitage noticed after a few steps and stopped well, turning around to face him again. “Is something the matter?”

“No,” Ben said quickly, regaining his composure and pushing forward again. “Everything’s fine. Let’s finish our walk, this fresh air is good for you before we start working.”

xXx

Rey was the one who found his grandfather, dead and drained in the forest after he lost his own fight against the creature that hunted Ben.

She was young, then, still a child, still Luke’s ward after her parents had disappeared. She, too, was special. Special like Ben was, like Luke and Anakin and Leia. Luke adored her, loved her, taught her more than he ever taught Ben, and she thrived with him.

But Rey also loved Ben, loved him in a way only found family could. She spent time with him at his grandfather’s house, where she followed him and looked up to him. Ben loved her, too, loved having the sister he had found in her. For a long time they were inseparable. 

And then the tragedies came.

Ben began having nightmares, visions of the monster in the vast nothingness. He told his grandfather about the dreams, and Anakin was worried. He sent Ben home to his mother, who had grown to disapprove of what her father did, what he was teaching her son. But she took care of him as best she could, as the nightmares grew worse. She put clove buds in his room, gave him little sachets of sage and small blue stones to put under his pillow. Then the stones were black, a ward for protection instead of resistance. Then salt, all around the house - and then the mirrors were removed.

Nothing worked, and when Rey would come visit him at his mother’s now, she, too, would have the nightmares of the creature surrounded by death. 

Luke would not let her return, after that.

Ben did not see Rey for years once that decision was made.

One week when Ben was only just thirteen, his grandfather asked Luke and Leia to return to his house, and they brought their children. Ben still to this day did not know what they had been called for, what his grandfather had done that night. But Anakin was insistent, told them he had information - information about the monster. All Ben knew, then, was that his grandfather believed him and the monster was real.

It was late several nights into their stay, and the adults were asleep. There had been an argument downstairs, one of several. Ben and Rey were still awake, though, sitting on the floor in Ben’s room and talking as the moon rose. They heard a door open and close, and then the front door slam. They both peered out the window that overlooked the front of the house and saw Anakin running into the woods with a flashlight and a small bag. Ben wanted to follow him but Rey held him back.

By sunrise Anakin hadn’t returned.

Luke and Leia were worried, and had already called the sheriff by the time Ben came groggily downstairs. Rey, rather than sitting for breakfast, had dragged him outside. 

It didn’t take long. Rey had run ahead and then Ben heard her start to cry.

She was at the foot of an old, gnarled tree neither had ever seen before. The trunk was thick, ancient, and black as a moonless sky. An unnatural blight on the earth. The leafless branches twisted outward, upward toward the canopy. Rey was kneeling in the dirt, and in front of her was a body. Ben knew, knew before he saw. It was his grandfather and he was dead. 

The children ran back to the house. The tree was gone when they returned with the adults, but Anakin was still there. 

The funeral was two days later. 

Ben’s grandmother asked him to stay when Leia left. He did, for a while. Took care of her while he finished high school. Rey visited him again, finally, during those calm and gentle years after Anakin’s death. But then he left for college and the visits stopped. The nightmares became worse and Luke did not want Ben near her.

It wasn’t long after he graduated college with a degree in business management that he turned around to threw his life away and followed his grandfather’s footsteps instead.

Luke was not happy, and told him as much. It was dangerous, he said. Ben would find his death along this path. That it was all his own fault for awakening the creature in the first place and allowing it entry to this world and Ben would reap the consequences. 

Ben renamed himself, both in defiance of his uncle and in the hopes of finding that path on his own, of forcing the monster away.

He hadn’t seen Rey again, not since that night in Luke’s kitchen ten years ago.

But the monster had strengthened during that time and brought death in its wake even against Kylo Ren’s most valiant efforts to stop it. Over and over, until Kylo vanished in defeat and Ben returned - returned and ran away to the place where it all began. He found Anakin’s journals, learned all he could about this creature of nothing.

Luke had been right.

Death was coming.

xXx

“So I just - what, just drink this and I’ll be cured?”

Armitage looked at Ben with an doubtful expression as Ben pushed a mug of tea across the kitchen table toward him. Ben frowned, irritated and hating that this was happening at all. He wanted to send Armitage away, even if he knew he never would.

“Hardly,” he grumbled. “The tea is just to help.” Armitage still stared at him incredulously, not taking the mug. “Look,” Ben snapped. “If you don’t want to do this, you can go down to the church in town. The pastor can help you instead. What’ll it be?”

Scowling, Armitage grabbed the mug and sniffed the contents. It was mostly nettle, with some ginger and rosemary. Not the best taste, Ben knew from experience, but harmless to the digestive system. The herbs were really just to serve as a net, to protect the mind and soul while Ben went poking around and stirring things up. It would help keep the drinker sane, when things began happening that would otherwise drive a person crazy.

Armitage sipped it, made a face, and then kept drinking. That was his decision, then. To stay.

Ben sat back in his chair and stretched his legs out, crossed at the ankles. “This isn’t going to be easy,” he said. “Whatever is in there, attached to you - it’s got its claws pretty deep. You’re going to have to work just as hard as I am.”

Armitage glanced at him, wary again. “What does that mean?”

“Every attachment is different,” Ben explained with more patience than he actually had. “Each being is different, each person. This thing with you, it’s pretty big. It’s going to fight before it leaves. So when it does, you need to be ready to let it go. If this thing thinks there is even the smallest chance you want it to stay, there’s no way in hell I can force it out. That’s your job - to make it know that.” 

Ben saw the second Armitage wavered, and he reached out with both hands to grasp at his face, to hold him there in that moment before the other’s resolve broke. “Stop,” Ben demanded, and Armitage stared at him with wide green eyes. “Stop thinking or this will not work. Just trust me.”

Armitage’s cheeks felt feverish under Ben’s fingers, clammy. Ill. He dropped his hands and sat back again, giving Armitage some space when his stare became too much, digging into Ben’s soul in a way he hadn’t felt in a very long time.

Abruptly, Ben stood and took a step back from the table. “Wait here,” he said, taking another step away. “I need to get my things, and then we can start. Finish your tea.”

Armitage obeyed, sipping at the lukewarm beverage, and Ben backed out of the kitchen. He paced quickly to the hall closet by the front door and, yes, there it was. He pulled a heavy velvet bag from the shelf to bring back to the table. Armitage was still there, which was both a relief and a bit of a surprise. But rather than saying anything, Ben upended the bag and spilled its contents out across the tabletop.

Everything was still in there. Ben grabbed a piece of chalk from the pile. Time to begin.


	3. Chapter 3

Getting started was the easiest part. Nothing was difficult yet, in this brief time before Ben knew what he was up against, and the motions were always the same.

Ben knelt on the wooden kitchen floor and scrawled several chalk sigils in a wide circle, which he then went over with a physical barrier of salt. The sigils were all ones he had learned from his grandfather, or else ones he and Anakin had created together. They set intentions of power, of authority and calm and strength. All things he drew on as fights stretched onward, something to fall back on when his personal strength began to wane.

War for a soul was very draining, after all.

He motioned for Armitage to join him on the floor, inside the big circle. Once Armitage was settled, Ben went over the salt with another layer, and then added a smaller circle inside the larger one. A handful of clove buds and dried sage leaves joined the salt of the second circle. Finally, Ben drew a last sigil in the center, between Armitage and where he himself sat. This one was his, his mark, and it sealed their circle closed.

“Are you ready?” he asked Armitage quietly.

“Yes,” Armitage replied, just as softly. “What must I do?”

“Meditate, if you can,” Ben explained, watching him closely for any sign of hesitation that would make his job more difficult. “Or just close your eyes and breathe, and focus as much as you can on forcing this thing out. I’ll do the rest.”

Armitage nodded and closed his eyes, not saying anything else. Ben took a deep breath, then another, and reached out to once again place his hands on Armitage’s face. Higher, this time, so his palms were over the other’s temples. He closed his eyes, steadied his breathing, and _looked_.

It was like opening a window, almost, when Ben let his senses see what his eyes could not. Like he was exposing a part of himself that was more powerful than any other. An exhilarating experience, and also one that made him very vulnerable.

What he saw was both expected and not. A blight, like creeping tendrils of black sludge, was edging its way through Armitage’s self, into his very being. It was this blight that gave him the nightmares, that sucked his energy straight from the source until there was nothing left but a shell. The source that made him afraid even when he saw nothing to be afraid of, that plagued his thoughts with terror the blight then consumed as the richest sustenance.

Ben pressed forward, sending his senses out along these tendrils and plucking them out as he went. Piece by piece by piece, removing what he could until he found the source to unravel the whole thing.

There was so much of it, the blighted sludge, that he could only just see the bright stirrings of Armitage’s self underneath. Hesitance had no place here, in this moment of focus, and he pushed onward, refusing to consider that Armitage might be past saving, that the blight was too much. That his light was almost gone.

The source, all told, was not difficult to find. The thorn, the base of this larger problem, was near Armitage’s chest, lodged in the energy center that was the bridge between the upper and lower channels of the body. Ben focused his attention there, prodding at it and trying to burn out what he could with his own energy.

But then, everything in his mind’s eye turned to nothing.

xXx

He was in the nightmare again, the dream of nothingness. The monster was near. Closing in. 

And yet, this time, he was not asleep.

He was awake, aware, and this was quite real.

All around him was the stench of death, of decay and rot. Ben was alone here, Armitage was gone, the kitchen was gone, and he was in the darkness of evil. He spun around on legs unsteady with his surprise, straining his eyes to see, to spot the creature before it saw him first. And there, there it was - 

It was huge, far larger than Ben had seen it in his dreams, all those hundreds of dreams. Tall, humanoid but not - not human, and very real. It’s skin was a sickly pale grey, limbs withered and back hunched. The face, a face Ben _knew_. Pockmarked and sunken, scarred, angry. So, so angry.

Ben took a halting step back, truly scared for the first time since being a teenager trapped in his vicious new nightmares.

He was staring death in the face and there was no escape.

“Boy,” the thing croaked, voice like the rattle of insects. It washed over Ben’s skin, made gooseflesh prickle with the sensation, with the alien fear it woke in him. The creature laughed and Ben recoiled. “Dear child. After so long...you are here now.”

The realization was chilling, when Ben finally understood that this was the thing clinging to Armitage’s soul. The monster from the tree, the one who saw through mirrors and was always, always watching. The one to kill his grandfather, to scare his uncle out of Ben’s life. Armitage had stumbled across it in his own world and then brought it here to Ben.

The monster chuckled again, seeing as the pieces fell together in Ben’s mind, and held up its arm to crook a finger at him. Beckoning. “Come, child. You are mine,” it said, the truth of that ringing through Ben’s body with a hollow kind of shock. “Come, now. Let me in. We can do so much, together, the two of us. Let me in.”

Ben felt fixed to the spot, to the dark nothingness beneath his feet, and could only watch as the creature took one limping step forward, and then another. Closer, closer, closer - and Ben could see the mottled color of its flesh that wasn’t flesh, smell the putrid rot of death that poured freely now. That hand was still extended to him, the withered and bent fingers reaching to grasp.

Finally, seconds or an eternity later, Ben stumbled backwards, out of reach just before those fingers could dig closed around his wrist.

A step back, then another. It wasn’t enough, and the creature continued to amble toward him, undeterred. Nothingness surrounded them both, offering no help and showing no exit from the torment he had stumbled into. He was stuck here, stuck with a death that wished very much to take him.

But then - then Ben _remembered_. Journals, pages and pages of notes in Anakin’s elegant script. The journals Ben had read after his grandfather’s death, that foretold of this, describing everything he had learned of this creature, this beast that hungered for the living. A veil, Anakin had explained. A veil had been broken here, around the monster’s world, and it craved entry to Ben’s own.

A veil, he had said, that could be closed with the right effort, the right words.

The wall would come back down.

Ben stopped his retreat and studied that darkness, the nothingness that had tortured him for so many nights, so many years. “No,” he ground out, feeling the power of it as he found himself once more beneath the despair. He said it again, louder, forcefully. “No. I won’t let you.”

The monster paused, an odd expression of incredulity on it’s withered face. But it smiled, a wickedly sharp grimace of pleasure. “You wish to defy me, boy? Very well. Your grandfather fell, and so will you. A pity.” It laughed again, the hand dropping into shadows. “Yes, a pity.”

The impulse came to him without thought, and Ben raised his arms, palms outward before him, just as the monster struck. It’s vicious claws hit something, a barrier, and Ben felt it then, too. The familiar salt circles he had left on the kitchen floor, in another world, gave him the strength he was missing so far away. The circle had followed him here - a barricade, offering protection as best it could.

The protection would not last long, though, he realized and, gathering his thoughts back to himself and pushing the bile of panic down, down, he saw the sigils in his mind and _focused_. He could smell sage through the reek of decay, the sharp spice of clove. Could taste the salt on his tongue.

He only needed to keep the barrier in place long enough to find the right veil, to pull it down and close the nothingness away.

Lights flashed through his mind’s eye, strings of so many indescribable colors, all connecting to something, someone, in different places and times through the nothingness back to a solid place. He just - just needed to find the right string, to break it.

Anakin’s journals had described this, the strings. He had written - for Ben, he knew now, to find after all was lost - that these threads linked back to everything, to the universe beyond and beyond. It made sense, then, the words Ben had taken for madness near the end of his grandfather’s life. 

There. There it was.

A black string glowing with a sickly light. 

He reached for it.

A savage pain assailed him, threw him back from his focus. There was blood, so much blood, and agony blossomed across his face. His hands flew up, felt only gore and slick wetness. The right side of his face was slashed open, gaping and weeping fluid. It was real, this injury, and the pain was - was - 

His left eye could still see, and he thrust his hand out again with a kind of blind fury, reaching for the cord. It was slimy, cold, and he grabbed it, pulled it out of the unseen and into the nothingness before him.

The creature shrieked, a terrifying sound of wrathful anger, and Ben sensed just before it happened that his shield was completely gone and he was defenseless.

The monster lunged and the contact was brutal. It was fast and violent, and Ben was vaguely aware that he did not have a chance of surviving this, not any longer. Claws met his side with no resistance, his stomach, and agony ripped him apart as his skin gave way to the carnage, as he stumbled, dropped to his knees, fell to his back. He had been disemboweled, there in the haze of nothingness from his dreams, and yet it was still real. Still happening.

His death had finally come.

It leaned over him, the monster, and laughed. Laughed and laughed, as Ben felt only the pain of his life ebbing away so, so slowly, felt the blood pooling around his body both here and in his far-away kitchen. And then he also felt the burning fury, fury at having lost to his own arrogance and futility when he knew all was beyond saving.

An ugly grey hand reached toward him, nails dripping with Ben’s blood and fingers extended toward the gaping tatters left of his throat. “You are mine, Kylo Ren,” it murmured in that ancient, rattling voice. “Mine for the taking.” 

But the thread - it was still in Ben’s hand, even as he lost himself.

He pulled.

The veil fell.

xXx

There was screaming and pain and blood. A great deal of blood. Ben couldn’t see, felt trapped in the darkness of his mind. Words, far away, and the touch of cold hands on the eviscerated remains of his face, his neck. The smell of salt and then of his own body, torn open and dying on the kitchen floor.

Sounds, loud and hazy. More hands.

More nothing.

xXx

Consciousness returned slowly. Ben heard the sounds first, the beeping and hissing of nearby machines, the squeak of a cheap leather chair, the slamming of a door far away. He smelled antiseptic, chemicals. A hospital, then. He was alive. Somehow. There was no sense to it, not yet, and he couldn’t bring his sluggish mind to care.

The unwanted miracle didn’t seem like much anyway when he abruptly became aware of the pain. It hurt far too much to breathe, and his slow inhale turned sharp, difficult. His abdomen felt like it was on fire.

“Ben!”

He tried to open his eyes, then, only to feel resistance from them both. The left one was crusted across his lashes, but eventually he was able to blink it away to see the hazy room around him. The right eye wouldn’t move. A shadow was looming, and he flinched violently when the shape of a hand reached toward him. The movement hurt and he gasped.

“Oh god, oh no, I’m so sorry!”

The hand retreated just as quickly as it had come, and Ben suddenly recognized the voice. He sounded creaky when he spoke, damaged. “Rey?”

“Yeah,” she said quickly, relief very evident. Her shadow returned to his periphery, though this time he didn’t flinch when she tentatively touched his shoulder. “Yeah, it’s me. I’m here. How do you feel?”

Ben didn’t really know how to answer that question, when he had been so certain he had already died, when the smell of blood was so fresh, and he asked instead, “What happened?”

Rey moved her hand to his forehead, pushing back the dirty hair there and then leaving the gentle pressure of her palm against the side of his head. She was standing over him, having leapt from the chair when he moved, and she stared sadly down at his face. “I’m not entirely sure,” she said softly. “The hospital called me almost five days ago, told me you were on your deathbed. No one really knows how you survived, honestly - and I’m afraid to know how you got all ripped up in the first place. The police thought it was the guy who called the ambulance, but - ”

“Armitage, fuck.” The memory of them sitting on the kitchen floor, at the beginning or the end, flashed into his mind, and he tried to sit up. Rey immediately put her hand back on his shoulder and had no difficulty keeping him down, especially when pain seared over him. “Fuck, _fuck_. Is he okay? This wasn’t his fault, Rey, tell them - ”

“No, I know, Ben, hush. Armitage is fine. He explained what he thinks happened, after I got here,” Rey told him, squeezing his shoulder through the loose hospital gown. “He’s out in the hallway, actually, he refused to leave. I’ll get him for you, hold on.”

It was only a few seconds, at most, after Rey opened the door that Armitage came running. He skidded to an unsteady halt in the doorway and then hesitantly took the last few steps to Ben’s bedside. He was pale, expression anxious, but...he looked better. Not haunted, not pulled apart by the blight Ben had seen eating away his soul. Someone had given him clean clothes. He looked like an Armitage Ben hadn’t yet met, the person he was before - before everything.

“Ben - ”

“Are you okay?” Ben asked before Armitage could speak. “Is it gone?”

Armitage gave a sharp nod, and Ben was startled when he wiped furiously at his face as a small tear leaked from one shining green eye. “Why the hell didn’t you tell me it was going to be so dangerous?” he asked angrily. “I saw - I watched something I couldn’t see rip your stomach open right in front of me, and you never - _damn_ you, I never would have agreed if you told me it was going to kill you! I saw -” His voice hitched and he swiped fiercely at his face again. “I saw your intestines fall out, Ben, and I couldn’t do anything except sit there in all that blood while you - ”

“Armitage, stop.” 

It was Rey. She came up behind him and touched his arm, and he turned his head to look at her. They shared a silent exchange Ben didn’t catch, and Armitage stepped out of the way so Rey could cross to his other side. Once Armitage sank silently into the vacated chair nearby, she asked, “Do you want to hear what the doctors said, Ben?”

That didn’t sound very encouraging, but he agreed numbly. He was tired, defeated, and didn’t really think the news would matter, anyway, when he had already lost so much. He wanted to go back to sleep, perhaps not wake up next time.

“They, um, put your insides back inside,” she muttered, glancing quickly at Armitage to anticipate another tirade. None came, so she continued. “Some of your stomach and large intestine needed to be removed after an infection two days ago, so your diet is going to be a little different now.”

Ben just scoffed and rolled his eyes - or _eye_ , singular - and she glared at him.

After a moment, she said, “They recommended physical therapy to rebuild the muscle they had to cut away. You’ll have difficulty walking for a while. And, uh, your face. There’s going to be a lot of scarring.” She paused, gauging his reaction so far - which was minimal, because Ben couldn't bring himself to care - and then added, “They were able to save your right eye, but they aren’t sure it’ll work again. I’m really sorry, Ben.”

Ben looked away from her crestfallen expression, though his gaze only landed on Armitage instead, still sitting quietly at his other side like he’d always been there in Ben’s life. Nothing really seemed to matter, and the revelation of his physical state washed over him and then away like a thin rivulet of rainwater. Insignificant. At this point, he may as well let himself die. He’d done what he was meant to do.

Rey must have caught onto his thoughts. She grabbed his hand up off the bed and held it tightly between her own, clasped against her chest. “It’s done, Ben,” she whispered so only he could hear. “That awful monster is gone, you _won_. Don’t leave me again, please. Stay with us.”

Ben closed his single eye and agreed.

xXx

Armitage didn’t leave, once Ben was released from the hospital. Instead he helped himself to Ben’s clothing, as his own belongings were an ocean away, and moved in without proper permission.

He was there to assist during Ben’s convalescence, both he and Rey told Ben with no room for argument. And Ben needed the help, that much was clear. So he let Armitage take care of him, even against every ounce of conditioning he’d had over those stretching years alone screaming at him to resist the companionship.

Ben slowly recovered and still Armitage stayed.

After a while, Ben appreciated his quiet company. They went on gentle, meandering walks through the woods as snow fell, and then as buds bloomed on the trees and leaves exploded into greenery. Armitage held his hand as they strolled, and Ben let him, twined their fingers together as time went by. 

It was an unhurried affair, and Ben eventually found himself grounded by it, by Armitage’s unexpected and steady presence in his life, as well as the strong arms that held him as he slept through the vicious memories that became less and less violent as the months wore on.

Pain still came, waves to crash over him and leave him winded, breathless, numb to life. But he felt strengthened by the pain, in a way. It was a reminder of what he had done and what he had defeated - the cost of those things.

Ben added to his grandfather’s journals, an account of his encounter with evil and how he had forced it away. Of course, those things rarely stayed gone forever. Evil begot evil, and the world was full of such things. He was quite aware of that fact, and the mirrors in his home remained covered lest something else find him across the worlds.

It would, one day. He and Armitage both knew that.

Still Armitage stayed.

xXx

Ben woke early one morning to summer sunlight pouring in through his uncovered bedroom window. Armitage was curled at his side, snoring softly and uncaring of the rising sun. It was windy, and the branches outside the window swayed to and fro, glittering with leftover rain from the night before.

He felt calm. Calmer than he had been in a very long time. The realization came swiftly, and he grinned to himself with the relief of it. His life was safe here, in this house where he grew up, and for the first time he relished that feeling without fearing otherworldly reprisal for it.

“You’re up early.”

Ben looked down when he heard Armitage’s tired voice and saw him gazing blearily up at him, blinking through the broken beams of sunlight. “Yeah,” Ben said, brushing his fingers across Armitage’s high cheekbone. “The sun woke me up, I guess. We forgot to close the curtains last night.”

“Oops.” Armitage rolled to his back and stretched, letting out a contented sigh when his muscles relaxed again. “Are we still leaving to see your family today?” he mumbled sleepily around a yawn.

“Mhmm,” Ben hummed, his hand grazing down Armitage’s waist when he grumbled about wanting to go back to sleep for a little while before they left for town. He curled back against Ben’s side. It was still so early, plenty of time yet before they had to get ready. But then -

“No dreams?”

It was a question Armitage asked every morning now, before they left bed to get ready for the day. A quick way to check in, to see if the danger had returned for them. Ben smiled at him when Armitage turned his gaze back up hopefully, bright green eyes shining in the morning sunlight. “Nope,” Ben said softly. “No dreams.”

No dreams. No nightmares. He was still free as another day began. The monster was still gone and Ben was still content.

Another beast would come, as one always did for people like Ben. 

But this time they would be ready, together.


End file.
